Monday, 25 August 2014

Okay, so the other day we meet up with a friend who raises a good question, a question we ourselves have been looking into for a while, a question we.re still trying to figure where we stand in belief towards it. He congratulated us on connecting with the Brooklyn Circus and representing the brand to a whole new audience in the township who aren't in urban spaces as much and are not too connected with the world moving beneath the surface, the internet.

With all that said he questioned where we stood in consideration of "African Fashion and style" looking at African manufactured textiles that represent Africa and will eventually shift the global culture into Africa's court. To be honest I had no answer for his questions as we are still understanding and appreciating through research of Africa and textiles manufactured for our people where we fit in, how we fit in and if we fit in into that identity.

This brings me back to this post and how we think we fit in, in re-shaping the image the world has of Africa and the image Africa has of Africa.

A couple of months ago when we met uncle Ouigi founder of the Brooklyn Circus, he told us about a global village and his 100 year plan and how his plan was not looking at the small victories of his brand and himself but at the bigger victories of everyone involved in the 100 year plan, that his plan looked at not recreating the past, but using it as a foundation to build his take on yesterday, today and tomorrow.

To us that is important. Our image may not be African in its traditional aesthetic, feel and maybe even in its expression, but it is in line with a global attitude of re-creating preconceived ideas of where the future is headed. It is African in its story-form, attitude, belief and values and to us, right now that is more important than its "look".

Our re-creation of our story might be blurry in communication and translation, but it is work-in-progress and hopefully it will reach to a point where it answers my friends question and maybe my own too.

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

I think the year is 2010, I'm in my last year of High School and Kabelo is just a grade below, our heads are all over the place, excited, we've just started thrifting, anyway the tumblr age was just beginning for us, we were looking at trade shows like Pitti Uomo, reading articles on street style talking about Bill Cunningham, Scott Schuman and we were practically obsessing over the culture in America, watching the lo-lifes in Ralph Lauren and of course Street Etiquette and the entire Black Ivy crew.

These were still early days for us so we didn't really know the names of half these people and what position in the culture they held and what they represented. Locally not much was happening that excited us except for the Smarteez who were huge if you were into the fashion scene back then and right at the core of it was Manthe Ribane who we drew so much inspiration from, anyway I digress back to talking about the reason for this blog post.

Sometime between all the research, thrifting and re-selling clothes we came across pictures of uncle Ouigi Theodore and the Brooklyn Circus, like most things we didn't know he'd have a major role on how all things would unfold later on. Not knowing his name, his style was the only connection we had with him, which at the time was sufficient I guess. Fast forward three years later we're engaging in conversation through Instagram, finally meeting and a year later receiving gifts from him.

We've collaborated with Manthe Ribane, styling her in the Brooklyn Circus as to say thanks to uncle Ouigi for having the faith in us and having one of our dreams come true. This is also to give gratitude to our sister Manthe Ribane for carrying the cross all those years for things like this to be even possible.